How to Talk About Sex with Your Daughter—or Your Mother

Ask the average woman to have this discussion, and chances are, she’ll cringe. Therapist Joyce McFadden explores what we’re afraid of, and why we should bare our souls.

By Catherine Price, Illustration by Christopher Silas Neal

What do you most want to know about your mom but would never ask?
When psychoanalyst Joyce McFadden posed this question to hundreds of women in an online survey that began in 2006, she was surprised by their answers: Half of the respondents wanted to know more about their mothers’ sexuality.

The queries ranged from the seemingly straightforward to the profound: “Did she date other men before my dad?” “Had she had an abortion?” “Why did she have an affair?” In her new book, Your Daughter’s Bedroom, McFadden explores the great value in sharing these kinds of intimate secrets—even when it’s awkward to do so. Understanding our mothers, she says, is vital to understanding ourselves. We asked McFadden how to get the conversation started.

Q: Why are these discussions so hard?
It’s not easy to blurt out the private details of your life to anyone. But moms often don’t discuss their sexual pasts because they’re embarrassed about things that happened, or worried they’ll scare their daughters. The daughters then withhold from their moms for fear of being judged. It’s a cycle. We’re not allowing ourselves to be real, whole women together.

Q: What are we missing out on?
We lose our moms as advisers, for one. Intimate relationships are bafflingly complex, and when things go wrong, many women consider themselves failures. But if they could talk about it, they might be able to move past that shame.

Q: What were your survey respondents hoping to learn about their moms?
Many were hoping that certain aspects of their mothers’ personalities might be illuminated. They said things like “I think she must have been abused” and “I have to assume she was sexually unhappy with my father.” They wanted to get to know their mothers better as women, because we look to our moms as guides. We study them all the time as we grapple with our own identity.

Q: Any advice on approaching Mom?
Make sure you consider the risks first, because you may learn things that you’re not prepared to know. If you feel ready, try looking for conversation starters in your everyday life—like a movie that touched on sexual relationships or a friend who is going through a divorce. I find that mothers are often happy to talk once their daughters give them an opening.

Q: How did you start talking about sex with your own daughter?
When she was little, I made sure she knew the correct names of her body parts. I didn’t know what a vulva was till I was, like, 30.

Q: Now that she’s a teenager, has it become more difficult?
She comes to me with questions, but there are definitely topics I have to broach. Before she started high school, I said, “We’re going to have a conversation about oral sex.” And she said, “I’m going to jump out of this car.” But I made the conversation happen. It’s my responsibility to teach her. Now we don’t have to talk about it again—unless she wants to.

Unspoken Questions
McFadden asked the women in her survey what they most wanted to know about their moms. This is what some of them wrote:

If she’s ever loved anyone as much as she loves my dad.

Why she stayed with my father.

Why she never told us that she married my dad after my older brother was born.

Why did she allow Grandma to push her into a marriage she wasn’t sure was right?

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Reviews

"McFadden offers insight and honesty in a discussion of the healthy ways mothers can help their daughters grow comfortable and knowledgable about their sexuality...There are hurdles to cross and backs to be straightened when it comes to this topic, but daughters need their mothers, and it's time they heard their voices. An empowering resource for mothers and daughters everywhere."
—Kirkus Reviews

"A fascinating and empowering text for women of all ages."
—Publishers Weekly

"I couldn't put it down. This book is a revolution in mindful caring for girls. It tells us how to dispel our own mother/daughter myths and how to realize and support our girls in the recognition and celebration of their sexual selves to gain lifelong physical and mental happiness. This is THE book I would recommend to all my mothers of girls and to all their doctors, teachers and therapists. I wish I had this book when I started in pediatric practice 20 years ago: from it I've learned that I missed so many opportunities to nurture my female patients as females growing into themselves. I love this book."
—Barbara H. Landreth, M.D., Clinical Instructor in Pediatrics, Weill Cornell Medical College, Pediatrician, The New York-Presbyterian Hospital

"What an amazing and insightful guide for mothers facing the huge challenge of supporting their daughters amidst the many "hate your body" media messages that assault all of us daily."
—Judy Norsigian, co-author of OUR BODIES, OURSELVES

"Your Daughter's Bedroom is loaded with the kind of insight, wisdom, and practical advice that all mothers need to know to raise healthy daughters who are comfortable with their own sexuality. I highly recommend it!"
—Christiane Northrup, M.D., ob/gyn physician and author of the New York Times bestsellers: WOMEN'S BODIES, WOMEN'S WISDOM and THE WISDOM OF MENOPAUSE

"Using thousands of intimate interviews with women Joyce McFadden argues that –despite ourselves and inadvertently—sexism comes, in part, from the unhealthy messages we send our daughters about sex and behavior. A groundbreaking look at sexuality, mothers, daughters, and the myriad subtle ways one generation of women shapes the next."
—Jennifer Baumgardner, author of MANIFESTA, LOOK BOTH WAYS and ABORTION & LIFE

"In this important book Joyce McFadden shows how mothers affect their daughters' sense of self through the sort of sexuality they model as well as their explicit communications and exhortations. It's an honest, surprising and compelling look at this crucial contemporary dilemma."
—Jessica Benjamin, Professor of Psychology, New York University, author of THE BONDS OF LOVE

"An important book that gets at the heart of the mother and daughter bond and finally explodes the myth that women have to turn themselves into sexless Stepford wives to be good mothers. Expansive, honest, informed, and real."
—Deborah Siegel, author of SISTERHOOD, INTERRUPTED

More Information

About Joyce

Joyce McFadden is a psychoanalyst and author of the groundbreaking book Your Daughter’s Bedroom: Insights for Raising Confident Women. Based on her unprecedented study of 450 women, in which women could talk about whatever was important to them, it was the women of her study who determined the book’s topic: how girls learn about sexuality from their mothers.